Cloud computing provides various services to users based on their demands by rearranging resources over networks. As one of the most promising services, cloud computing helps reducing heavy burden of complex computation at user devices and breaking the bottlenecks of restricted resources in order to satisfy user demands at any time and in any place.
Data aggregation is concerned with: collecting and analyzing the personal information of lots of involved parties to obtain some important aggregated or processed information. With the fast growth and development of the network, more data are monitored/sensed/collected by Internet of “things” for deep analysis. The cloud computing can assist complex computation due to its great computation ability in order to dig out significant information. In many application scenarios or systems, data are collected from different entities in order to find out crucial information to support advanced and intelligent services. For example, an aggregator may gather the sales data to discover the most popular products among the consumers. The website can enhance the browsing experiences of consumers by recommending the most popular products to satisfy the appetites of consumers in a personal way. In another example, trust evaluation always needs to collect evidence or recommendation for processing and analyzing in pervasive social networking based on the internet or a self-organized mobile ad hoc network. A trust evaluator needs to aggregate user feedback and statistics in order to assess reputation and trust. Data aggregation and analysis can be widely applied in many applications in order to offer advanced services.
In view of this, it would be advantageous to provide a way to allow for flexible, secure and efficient data aggregation in cloud computing.